Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (24 page)

What if the girlfriend didn’t die, he wondered.  What if both characters survived, but feeling emasculated by his paralysis, by his loss of identity – another kind of death – his protagonist shoves her away?  What if years later, he’s finally able to re-open his heart not to some new flame, but to a never-quite-extinguished ember?

“And what, now I’m writing for Harlequin?”

Irritated, Tucker dropped back into his chair.  He stared at the screen.  Tapped his fingers on his thigh.  His mind drifted back to that morning.  His body recalled with interest the sound Sarah made in her throat when he’d kissed her.

Be
fore telling him she hadn’t stocked his book because she’d found it depressing.

“Shit.”  Tucker dragged a hand down his face. 
Thrillers and romance novels might be easier sells, but he hadn’t yet compromised his creative vision simply to appeal to the masses. So he poised his fingers above the keyboard, and spent the next thirty minutes describing the girlfriend’s – maybe he should give her red hair – slow, wrenching death.

He sat back, satisfied.  

Until her hand twitched.

“Aw, come
on.”

Disgusted with his inability to put what he –
the author –
wanted on the page, Tucker stared at the ratty wallpaper border which still circled the room.

From cradle to grave, he mused, recalling his thoughts when he’d decided to make this his office.  He’d started off life in this room and now he was fictitiously ending someone else’s.

Or trying to, anyway. 

He’d hoped that by gett
ing out of New York, coming to this small, sleepy town, he’d be able to
clear
his head.  To escape some of the psychological mess that had been cluttering it up since his mother’s death. 

But instead he’d ended up next to a bookstore. A bookstore
operated by a woman who not only drove him nuts and seriously turned him on, but who – just today – made him question if he knew what the hell he was doing.

Feeling edgy
, Tucker decided he needed to take a break, think about something else. 

His gaze shifted, landing on the paper on the corner of his desk.  Mason. 
The weasel.  He’d avoided Tucker all morning, then left a note saying he’d be out most of the afternoon.

And Allison Hawbaker’s car had mysteriously disappeared from the parking lot.

Tucker guessed you could keep a horse away from water, but if the damn thing was determined to drink, there wasn’t much you could do.

And then there was this business with his grandfather. 

He
glanced at the new wood he’d cut for the floor.  It was his place, dammit.  Maybe before it had been his in name only, but now he was putting himself into it.  Sweat and blood.  And he wasn’t going to let whatever crap Carlton pulled taint that.

“Meow.”

Tucker looked up.  The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere directly outside his window.

“Meow.”

Pushing back from the desk, he went over to peer out.  The moss-draped limb of an oak twisted across his view.  It was empty. He followed the line of the tree to the ground, but couldn’t see the cat.

“Meow.  Meow.  Meow, meow.”

Wherever it was, it sounded frantic.  Tucker stuck his head out and glanced up.  An obese gray blob clung to a scrawny branch over his head.

“You have got to be kidding me.”  Tucker
frowned at Sarah’s cat.  He glanced toward her cottage, but he doubted she was home yet.  There were still a couple of cars crowded into the bookstore’s lot.

So he’d call over the
re, tell her to come get the dumb thing.  But as he pulled his head in, Tucker heard a soft
crack.

Looking back up, he saw the branch hanging at a lower angle
.

“Jump,” he told the animal, which appeared too frozen with fear now to make a sound.  There was a much more solid branch almost directly beneath it.  “In case no one’s ever told you,
” he added blandly “your kind tends to land on your feet.”

But
it simply stared at him, eyes like yellow saucers.

“Of all the…”
Shaking his head, Tucker jumped over the loose boards to cross the room.  The attic window was within arm’s reach of the broken branch.  He guessed he’d have to go up there and pull the damn cat through.

Tucker found the creaky old door and climbed the narrow stairs.  He’d only given the attic a cursory glance when he’d done his initial exploration of the house.  It was filled with decades of junk that he’d have to get around to sorting through eventually.

Dust raised in small clouds as his bare feet hit the scuffed floorboards, and Tucker nearly choked on the hot, lifeless air.  He wound his way around an ugly table and a broken mirror, following tattered ribbons of sunlight toward the window.

The cat’s muffled cry echoed through the glass.

Unlatching the lock, Tucker tried to lift the heavy sash, but humidity and years of neglect had caused the wood to swell.  “You and your owner share some similar traits, you know that?” Tucker said to the cat.  “You’re both large pains in my ass.”

Putting his shoulder into it, Tucker finally got the window to slide up a measly foot, and he wedged his head and shoulders beneath it.  “You’d better.”  He grunted, and the window gave another inch.  “Kill any mice.” Two more. “That hang out around here.”  And finally, he was through.  “Or next time you get stuck in my tree, I’ll leave your fat carcass to rot.”

Tucker grabbed the cat, which had the temerity to scratch his arm. Though to be fair, it hadn’t seemed intentional.

“You’re about one Tender Vittle away from coronary bypass, aren’t you?”

The cat purred, and Tucker scratched its belly.  He guessed it was kind of cute, despite the Jabba-the-Hutt thing it had going on. 

“Useless!”

Tucker’s head came up.

“Useless, where are you, you
obstinate little butthead?”

Fighting back a grin
, Tucker looked down toward the ground.  Sarah stood near the hedge, glowering toward his house.

“Looking for someone?” he called down, satisfied when she jumped.

Shielding her eyes, Sarah looked up through the branches.  A stray beam of sunlight turned her hair to flame.

“Not you, though it’s nice to know you recognize those qualities in yourself.”  Then a little less sassily, “I seem to have lost my cat
again.”

“Does he look like this?”  Tucker held the animal up to the open window.

“Useless!”

“I can’t believe you named your pet that.”

“He’s a neutered male.  Don Juan seemed cruel.”

“He got stuck in my tree.” Tucker tried to resurrect his
earlier resentment, but between amusement and the purring cat, he just couldn’t find it in him.

“I ran into the house
for something and he made his escape.  Guess he was hoping to catch you in the shower again.”

“
You want to come up and join me, I’ll be happy to let him watch.”

“That’s very generous, but I have some paint I need to watch dry.”

He grinned.  “Sooner or later, Red, I’m going to make you eat those words.  I’ll bring him down.”

“Thank you.”  Her arm dropped to her side.

Tucker headed toward the stairs, but wasn’t watching where he was going.  When he came around the table, he kicked over a box.

“Crap.”  Tucker glanced down at the scattered contents.  Some old baby clothes.  A rattle
, a keychain.  A collection of greeting cards. 

Recognizing his mother’s handwriting, Tucker slowly knelt down to the floor.  Balancing the cat in one arm, Tucker flipped the card open with his finger. 

For our sweet Tucker, on his first birthday.  Love, Mommy and Daddy

Something inside him squeezed. 

His mother had been the very best kind of woman: sensitive, sweet-natured.  Even-tempered and kind.  Of course, Tucker, being none of those things, was forced to be careful not to inadvertently trample on her feelings.  He’d messed up a few times here or there, but mostly they’d done okay.  He’d made her proud.  It made it easier, knowing that. 

Stroking the cat, he flipped through the stack, finding various birthday cards,
the commemoration of his baptism, even a card from Carlton when Tucker was born.  Instead of teddy bears or little alphabet blocks, it bore some pretentious symbol that Tucker thought might be the family coat of arms. 

Son,

Typical, Tucker thought. No mention of his mother.

Congratulations on the birth of another generation of Pettigrew men. 

Tucker snorted.  What must it have been like having to live with that kind of crap?  He wondered if she’d ever questioned whether marrying a Pettigrew had been worth it.  But then he found another card, this one from his father. 

Sweetest Ellie,

I can’t tell you how proud I am right now
.  Of you, and of that precious little boy two clueless kids managed to bring into the world today.  Well, mostly you managed it.  I’m just the sap who almost passed out.  You know I’m no good with this stuff, but I managed to find this in one of those books you’re always reading, and I think it fits.

Some of the words were smeared, the page stained with what looked like water spots, but Tucker recognized Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnet 43.  By the time he got to the end, which spoke with terrible irony of love even after death, Tucker realized that the words were blurred not from water, but from tears.  His mother’s tears.  And that his own had fallen to mingle with them.

And he knew.  For her, it had been worth it.

Tucker had so little of his father.  So few memories.  Hardly any tangible mementos.

To read this, to feel his father’s joy, his pride in Tucker, his love for his wife, gave new scope to the breadth of what all of them had lost.  A husband.  A father.  A life.  After the enormity of that kind of tragedy, how could his grandfather have further torn them apart?

“Hello?  You up there, Tucker
?” 

Crap.  He’d forgotten all about Sarah.  The cat stirred at her voice, but seemed either too content or too exhausted to move.

“I’m, uh…” He had to clear the thickness out of his throat.  “I’ll be right there,” he called down the stairs, but he could already hear her steps on the treads.

“I thought maybe Useless was giving you…”

With a sense of desperation, Tucker turned away. But he’d forgotten about the mirror. Twenty different Sarahs and his own heartsick reflection stared back.

“…trouble,” Sarah finished.  And as she noticed the pile of childhood mementoes strewn across the floor, pity softened her face.  “Oh, Tucker.  I’m sorry.”

She hitched up her gauzy skirt and knelt on the floor beside him.  She extended a brightly painted nail to trace the embossed letters on one card.  “It does get better.”

He forced his frozen lips into a sneer.  “Mor
e words of wisdom from the land of happily-ever-after?”

Her head came up at that.  “That’s the great thing about fiction, Tucker. 
It can be whatever you want.  Real life sucks too often.”

“What would you know about it?” 

He waited for whatever verbal grenade she’d launch – welcomed it, in fact.  He felt raw, exposed, needy.  And was spoiling for a fight.

B
ut she reached over and rubbed her cat.  “I know that when my mother died, I felt like my safety net was gone.”  She met his gaze, but Tucker was the one to look away.  

“
Underneath the grief, there was anger.  And beneath the anger, an unreasoning fear.”

Tucker’s own unreasonable fear made him thrust the cat off of his lap.  He didn’t think he could handle her understanding.

“Here’s your animal.  Goodbye.”

“Tucker, I didn’t mean to –”

Close to panic, he headed for the stairs.  He’d thought that by getting out of New York, he was leaving this behind. But hell, coming to this town, this house…had he returned here looking for some kind of emotional security blanket, like a little kid?

He stiffened when her footsteps followed behind him.

“Tucker.”

“The front door’s that way.”  He pointed, and then headed for his room.  He’d sweated right through his
T-shirt.

“If you’d just –”

“Sweet Jesus.  You just don’t know
when to shut up.”

Because she didn’t, because she’d pushed him to the very edge of a precipice that he was afraid to look into, Tucker backed her against the wall.  The cat protested with an annoyed meow, and leapt away to disappear down the hall.

Sarah’s eyes were wide on his.  “What are you doing?”

“
Putting that mouth of yours to use.”

He took.  With no thought to finesse, to what she might want, Tucker plundered.  When her lips parted in surprise, he invaded with his tongue. 
It wasn’t the teasing sample of that morning.  It was brutal, reckless demand.  He wound a hand into her hair, pulling her head back, fully expecting her to bite him.  But she didn’t. The damn fool woman just stood there.  And Tucker dallied too long, because he felt himself growing hard.